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I’ve gotten a few e-mails lately regarding putting a low GPA on your resume as well as a ton of referrals from Google searches on the topic so I thought a post addressing it was in order. Ok, let’s not waste any time!

What will happen if I don’t put my GPA on my resume?

In most cases the recruiter will probably assume you have a low GPA. Think about it, if you had a 4.0 is there any doubt you would slap that achievement front and center under your Education section?

How low will they assume your GPA is? Well obviously that depends on the recruiter, but I think typically they will assume your GPA is somewhere between a 2.5 and 2.9 which is where, in my experience, most GPAs lie on the spectrum when they are not listed.

Rest assured all recruiters have seen many resumes without a GPA and have had to ask follow-up questions to obtain this information. Therefore each recruiter will bring their own bias about what an unlisted GPA implies for a particular candidate.

What about just putting my major GPA on my resume?

The question of whether you can exclude your cumulative GPA in favor of your major GPA on your resume is a tricky one. It is true that most employers put a premium on your major GPA over your cumulative GPA, however many may still require that you provide your cumulative.

In addition, major GPAs are more relevant for graduating students than those seeking an internship. With graduating seniors a major GPA represents two years of continued in-depth work with increasing focus and difficulty as one moves from 300-level classes to 400-level classes (from Junior-level to Senior-level). A major GPA for a college junior is usually made up of just a handful of classes which makes it much less relevant.

By listing a major GPA you may entice a recruiter to have follow-up communications to determine your overall GPA at which time you can begin an engagement about why your other relative merits should outweigh your GPA. On the other hand there is the chance they will need your cumulative GPA to process your application and won’t have time to contact you to obtain that information. More on that in a bit.

Of course this is all under the assumption that your career of choice is in the field you majored in. Simply listing a major GPA if you are a career changer won’t do much for you—who cares about your Forest Management GPA if you are trying to go in to Construction Management?

Many of the arguments I provide in this article regarding the discussion of a no GPA vs. a cumulative GPA strategy also apply to a cumulative GPA vs. major GPA placement. I’ll let you decide for yourself whether you want to solely put your major GPA on your resume, however I strongly recommend a dual strategy of placing both GPAs on your resume as in:

* Communication Major GPA: 3.41, Cumulative GPA 2.94

That way you highlight your major GPA while at the same time playing it safe if a recruiter wants to see both. Let’s discuss some more argument for listing your GPA and then follow it up with some counter arguments about why it might be better not to list your GPA.

Arguments for listing your GPA

I think the arguments for listing your GPA differ depending on whether you are applying in person or online. First, I’ll talk about in person applications and then online submittals.

In Person Applications

If you are applying in person there are really two strategies representing two different schools of thought of career consultants. The school of thought I subscribe to is that you should list your GPA, and there are five main reasons I believe in it:

1. Recruiter Assumptions – By using a resume with an unlisted GPA, the recruiter will almost always assume you have “low” grades, defined, as we talked about above, by their experience working with students who don’t list their GPA. So the recruiter may assume you have a higher or lower GPA than is actually the case. Either way this is bad for you—if they assume your grades are higher than they are it will be a let down when they find out your actual GPA; if they assume your grades are lower, you are going through the application process with an unnecessary handicap.

2. Peace of Mind – Since no company is likely to hire you without finding out your cumulative GPA first, why not reveal it up front. If you don’t, you’ll always have the fear in the back of your mind that when the recruiter does find out your GPA, they’ll kick you out the door. I would rather go through the process knowing the recruiter is at least open to the idea that I am more than my grades.

3. Minimize Recruiter Effort – I am a fan of making a recruiter’s job as easy as possible—I want my resume to be completely self-contained with all information easy to access. Making the recruiter inquire about your GPA is one more thing they have to do. This may not be a big deal if they are looking at one resume, but after looking at 100 in a matter of a few hours, it starts to get annoying. You don’t want to be the brunt of a recruiter’s bad day.

4. Recruiter Error – In addition, let’s imagine the recruiter forgets to inquire about your GPA or doesn’t notice it in the initial contact session with you. Now imagine the recruiter has whittled the 100 resumes they spent two hours looking at down to 6 finalists. But here’s the catch—they only have 5 interview spots open. Given two candidates with similar experience do you think the chances are better that they will take the time to e-mail you and wait for your response, or simply choose to interview the candidate that has included all relevant information on their resume?

5. Mitigation Techniques – There are a variety of resume techniques you can use to mitigate a low GPA on your resume. See the links at the top of this article for more information on the technique specifics.

Online Applications

Submitting a resume that includes a GPA is even more critical when using an online application process. Let’s talk about why.

1. Difficult Engagement – During a career fair, company information session, or interview it takes a matter of seconds for a recruiter to inquire about your GPA and solicit a response. When submitting online, the employer no longer has that luxury. At a minimum, they have to take time away from what they are doing and give you a call or send you an e-mail.

In the best case situation you pick up their phone call or see their e-mail right away, but what if you don’t? You could easily find yourself playing a game of phone tag and at worst the recruiter might get frustrated and give up. And what about your e-mail, what if you are out of town or simply don’t check your e-mail for a few days? This back-and-forth communication is all a waste of time at the expense of not only you, but also the recruiter.

2. Busy, busy, busy – During a career fair, company information session, or job interview, the recruiter is able to carve out some one-on-one time and really spend a few minutes addressing your candidacy for the position. In an online review process, that same recruiter may be sifting through hundreds of resumes trying to find an ideal applicant. The only way to stand out in this case is on paper, and that means having a complete and well-flowing resume that doesn’t require the recruiter to do anything but read.

3. Online Applications – Many online applications contain text boxes or drop down menus where you are required to list your GPA. In this case not listing your GPA becomes moot point.

Arguments for NOT listing your GPA

Although I do not subscribe to this school of thought, there are some valid arguments which I’ll try to represent fairly.

In-Person Applications

1. Recruiter Prejudice – Listing a low GPA subjects you to the subconscious prejudice of recruiters who won’t be able to separate you from your low GPA. Although most recruiters are good natured and are there to help, it is true that all people carry biases regardless of how hard they try not to.

2. Recruiter Engagement – Not listing your GPA allows you to engage the recruiter when the subject does come up. Once the recruiter asks you about your GPA, you’ll be able to instantly address the shortfall and provide a verbal mitigation describing how your other qualities outweigh your low GPA. However, I feel that this same strategy can be used when listing your GPA. There is nothing stopping you from obtaining all the benefits of listing your GPA on your resume and at the same time engage the recruiter during first contact.

3. Alternative GPA – As I discussed towards the beginning of this blog post, sometimes simply listing your major GPA is enough to satisfy the curiosity of employers regarding your academic aptitude. This is because most employers put a premium on your major GPA over your cumulative one.

4. Much Ado About Nothing – Maybe all this emphasis I am putting on GPAs is just overblown. Personally, I think your GPA is one of the biggest contributing factors to your hire with a particular firm, but I am just one guy writing a career blog. It is completely reasonable and possible that you’ll get a recruiter that just doesn’t care about GPA. Maybe they can identify with low GPAs and so they don’t ask, maybe they judge you by their rapport with you first and grades second, maybe they think previous work, internship, or volunteer experience speaks volumes more than your grades. Whatever the reason, all recruiters are unique so the importance they place on your GPA is all relative.

Online Applications

Choosing a strategy of an unlisted GPA on an online resume is extremely risky. Since you won’t be able to use the engagement strategy for unlisted GPAs I described above during the submittable process (as you can during a career fair or other recruitment event), you’ll have to hope you make it to the interview rounds where you can begin this discussion. In addition, as I stated above, many online applications have a separate text box or drop down menu for you to list your GPA, so not listing it on your resume becomes moot in that case.

Well that’s it for today, I hope you found this post useful. As always, if you have any questions feel free to leave a comment or e-mail me at collegegraduatejobs@gmail.com.

One of the biggest fears many graduating seniors express when attempting to find a job is the all important GPA. And there is no denying that your GPA is one of the top factors influencing recruiters during their selection process. As well it should be, it is a strong indicator of the amount you have learned in college and the amount of work you put in.

That being said, your GPA is not the only factor affecting your candidacy and there are plenty of examples of people who have lower than desired GPAs who get great jobs by supplementing their grades with other experience and taking the time to market themselves well. So how do you put a positive spin on a low GPA?

Well there is a little trick and today I’d like to share it with you. But first I’d like to digress briefly. The first piece of advice regarding your GPA is to actually put it on your resume. I can’t tell you how many resumes I’ve seen without a GPA listed. With few exceptions (such as a school grade no disclosure policy) I think it is a real mistake not to list your GPA under the Education section of your resume. It is extraordinarily unlikely that you will make it to the offer stage with your target company without them finding out your GPA at some point along the way. They may ask during the career fair, during one of the interview rounds, or they may ask for your transcripts as proof of graduation before you are hired. So why not just put it out there so you can start to have the discussion about how you are more than your grades?

Ok, on to the trick I mentioned above, which is to actually put down two different GPAs on your resume. Let me explain. The first will be your cumulative GPA for all of college up to that point. But it is really the second GPA that does the work for you. This second GPA should be a logical grouping of classes that has a calculated GPA higher than your cumulative. For example, it may be all of your senior year classes. It may be upper division classes in your major. It might be your major GPA itself if it is significantly higher than your cumulative. Or it may be the GPA of a specialization within your major that is often part of the curriculum at many schools.

So let’s look at some real world examples of groupings you might use as they would be listed on your resume:

So after choosing a grouping the process becomes pretty easy. You just get a copy of your transcripts and calculate the GPA of the grouping you choose. If you don’t know how the calculation works at your school, you can often find it in the academic handbook. So after you have decided on a grouping and done the calculation you might get a line under your Education that looks like this:

Cumulative GPA: 2.54; 400-level Accounting class GPA: 3.18

So finally let’s put it together and see what your Education section might look like on your resume:

What you are doing is really two-fold. First, you are giving a visual indication of solid academic performance. And man whenever I see this dual GPA method I just love the way it looks!

More importantly you are indicating to the employer that you have a deep understanding of some target subject or set of classes, in the example above, in senior level engineering coursework. This also shows the recruiter that your academic performance got better with time and that you were able to hunker down towards the end of college. For that reason, my advice would be to try and create a grouping from the second half of college. Choosing from the later half of your college career demonstrates improvement with time and involves more relevant classes that have occurred more recently.

For an additional tip on dealing with a low GPA check out my post entitled: “Resume Tips – Discussing Number of Hours Worked.”

Well I hope you find this little trick useful. Most students I share this with get really excited about the chance to show a positive side of themselves and this trick really does help. If you have any questions about this post or need tailored advice to your specific job search, including free resume consulting, please e-mail me at collegegraduatejobs@gmail.com.